Thursday, 22 September 2011

Side Kick Nicks debut (only?) album ‘Miscellaneous Adventures’ has been on CD rotation in my car for yonks now, yet to be honest I hadn’t done any homework on Nick, the guy behind one of the best Kiwi albums of the last five years. Seriously if you haven’t got this album you deserve the new series of The X-Factor. So thanks to the wonders of google I was able to do a bit of research which would be selfish not to share. Included is the ultimate in lazy journalism – a You Tube interview (below) Bullet Magazine provided a great interview, excellent morsels, like the project took nine years to write and complete. Music-wise that’s the time stalagmites take to form, but as they say in the cheese advert some-things take longer. His influences included 3D’s and The Beatles when I would have picked Beck and Blur. He hates bands/composers that don’t try and do something different, saying 99% of the stuff we get dished up nowadays is the same-old, same-old. Isn’t that the truth?! SKN is a sideline from Voom a band he’s in. Ironically, perhaps further evidence that N.Z is a one-horse town, I flogged a Voom song in a promo I did for The Naseby Luge (refer below, like my feet?) Oh yeah before I forget He being Nick has a surname. It’s Buckton. You need his album. Play it lots like me and get reminded it exists when you stumble on-to Karen Hay and Andrew Fagan’s evening show on Radio Live. ‘Amputee Acrobat’ is their theme-song, in case you were scratching your head wondering where you had heard it before.

Tuesday, 20 September 2011

Hardly a day goes by without another Rugby World Cup Music Video pouring from the bowels of You Tube.

Amidst the RWC enthusiastic (the best praise I can issue) All Black supporter videos have appeared from bedrooms/studies around the country.

These supporter videos fall generally into three camps:

(a.)JUST NOT FUNNY: This particular pervading vein of comedy has always escaped me. I’m more a Monty Python, League of Gentlemen follower than say Benny Hill. I just don’t find the ubiquitous reworked corny-song to be interesting. To the contrary I find them cringe-worthy. If you have something to say satirically – then by all means go ahead – use music, but at least be original, mildly amusing.

(b.)JUST NOT GOOD: C for effort and D for innate talent.

(c.) MELODRAMATIC TWADDLE: It's a friggin' game of sport not a ballad about a dog with cancer.

If you are brave enough, check some of these ‘creations’ below (think: the Frankenstein version of the term creation)

Health Warning: Not to be viewed by anyone with a full stomach, on heart medication.

Wednesday, 14 September 2011

When the Rugby World organisers came to picking a song that embodied the Kiwi enthusiasm for the game, tournament solidarity etc they fittingly choose a one-hit-wonder by a light-weight British band that crashed and burned.

But let’s face it, music and rugby in New Zealand have never mixed -so why stop a century plus of tradition?

Kiwi Music is something skinny soccer-playing poofs do - fuck em!

Real men do haka’s drink beer, eat pies, play rugby and struggle to even do a rendition of the national anthem in public.

At dances women sit in gaggles on the other side of the hall, until socially inept males get enough beer in their guts they can muster enough fortitude to start up a conversation, then proceed to dance like a McSkimmings brick on P.

Don’t you know that 'real men' in New Zealand live vicariously through the exploits of a single sporting entity, worship at their altar, in dressed and undressed states, yet by-in-large never actually play the game they claim to love.

Real Kiwi chicks dream of themselves being at the centre of an All Black gang-bang with Ritchie and Dan at the head of the line, then proudly slipping the DVD into the player to show their neurotic mates ‘over the tea cups’ their sexual exploits and lustfully pondering “I wonder who’s baby it is I’m carrying?” Little wonder Kiwi womanhood purchase more sex toys per head than any other female population on the planet.

Face it, after a century of supporting their beloved All Blacks, Kiwi fans have yet even construct a single chant, apart for the moronic, migraine inducing “Black, Black, Black” which sounds like the back-seat of a sheltered-workshop bus trip to the zoo.

So the idea of producing a Kiwi Rugby Songs ‘Rucks, Tries &Choruses: The History Of NZ Rugby... In Song’ was on par with the principal of a hip-hop album by Kyle Chapman and The National Front, inclusive of a re-make of 'Melting Pot.'

This is THE most dire, banal record to ever grace the shelves of New Zealand. It makes 100 Great Organ Hits by John Hoare (Music World) look like Dark Side of the Moon.

Here is a sample of the platitudinous load of sheep-droppings that audaciously masquerades as N.Z music:

Doug Catley & The Fernleafs - Big Bad Don

Paul Walden With Garth Young - When The All Blacks ComeMarching In

Lew Pryme With Winston Mccarthy - The Feat Of Fantastic Fergie

Black Bolt & The Silver Ferns - Give Em A Taste Of Kiwi

Miramar Chess Club - I'll Never Be An All Black

John Pike & Hop Owens & The Hop Heads - Rugby Rock

The Howard Morrison Quartet - My Old Man's An All Black

The album ‘Rucks, Tries and Choruses’ is a frankly an insult to ones intelligence & ear drums. For the radio-blurb to suggest “This is Rugby Heaven” makes me want to leap from a high diving board, plunge head-first into eternal-damnation's 'pit of fire' yelling "yipeeeeee!"

Seriously - do they supply a vomit bucket with every CD?

Still I guess this is kulture in New Zealand.

It’s not as if we produce say plastic wakas, eh?

Far be from me to criticise the countries ruling order, the Pol Pots that put-together this 'musical killing field', even if they do wear y-fronts and gumboots to bed.

It’ll probably go # 1 in the N.Z Charts.

PS: Don’t fret, there is a song by one of The Finn Brothers, isn’t there always?

Tuesday, 13 September 2011

Fuck I hate ‘official’ songs written especially for sporting events. Invariably they fail, a might like The All Blacks when it comes to competing at World Cup Rugby tournaments. There have only been two decent theme songs written for sporting events in my living memory (both below) Scrape below the scab of the official theme song and you’ll also find a plethora of sporting-event-induced fan-videos/songs, 99.9% of which are so sickly you puke after the first line of the lyrics, your body organs stop functioning inclusive of bowels. Moving the loss of bodily functions theme along in tandem with the Rugby World Cup, we have the piss-takers like 'The Man on The Street' (above) who make absolutely no attempt beefing-up their chosen teams credentials when it comes to penning a tune – they tell it like it is – stuff who they up-set. Can we even call this an All Blacks 'Supporter' video(?) Who gives a rats, piss-takers automatically get a 20 point head-start per my rule-book.

Got my mits on inaugural copy of the new weekly Kiwi music mag ‘Volume’ the other-day (6th Sept with Drab Doo Riffs on the cover) If # 1 is anything to go by - what a cracker addition to the Kiwi music scene ‘Volume’ will be. The format harks back to those rustic days of Rip it Up. Nifty articles, fringe cartoons, adverts worthy of inclusion based on artistic merit alone, interviews, the smell of newsprint, album reviews, snippets of wots-up in the main centres, gig guide. All the good stuff, all in a format which means it can be consumed easily with a pint of beer. Coming your way outta Auckland every Tuesday, I thoroughly recommend you seek out ‘Volume’ at your local record shop. Free is also a great price.

Sunday, 4 September 2011

The Natgeo station on Sky is running a series called ‘Taboo’ featuring the eccentric, weird and wonderful habits of the planets inhabitants. Guys that dress as babies, weirdos that think they are vampires, brothers who fuck sisters etc. You get the picture. Last week’s episode (2nd video below) concentrated loosely on ‘hoarders’ and last up was a record collector from Philadelphia called Jerry Webber. For the record (no pun intended) this bloke is not one of those stereotypical deranged hoarders – Jerry is a true collector, an archivist that needs a medal. His collection is around 2 million pieces of vinyl occupying about 90 percent of the converted warehouse, come home. Fucking oath, he sleeps surrounded by his collection. What’s more he runs a record-shop called simply ‘Jerry’s Records’ which has at any one time approx a million items on sale! This guy is a friggin’ legend, enough to restore anyones faith in human nature. His shop is a massive treasure trove with vinyl ‘for Africa.’ These You Tubes will get all record-collectors salivating and thinking “if there is an after-life - this must be heaven!”

Thursday, 1 September 2011

In the same week I heard some positive earthquake news, suicide-rates had dropped post quake, I came across a person who actually attended the Dave Dobbyn with the Christchurch Sympathy (sic) Orchestra Concert last night. Naturally I instructed him to remove all poisons, solvents and sharp-objects from his household, least he is overcome with dark-thoughts as a result of attending, what the uber-conservative Christchurch Press reviewer headlined ‘Orchestra can’t improve Dobbyn’. The only way of improving Yoda’s conjoined twin would be to get him drunk, strip him of his Old Testament and teleport him back to when The Dudes were doing pubs and every ‘young thing’ they could get their grubby paws on. It goes without saying last night Dobbyn played such ghastly numbers as ‘Slice of Heaven’ and purportedly as tragic as this sounds some of the audience danced, that’s to say threw off the blankets on their laps before their nurses recommended calming down for the sake of their health. Dobbyn and his legion of living-dead need reminding of Friedrich Nietzsche immortal words “In heaven all the interesting people are missing.” The actual concept of a classical/hybrid version of ‘Whaling’ is enough to produce my own wailing akin to a Middle Eastern woman at a funeral. In a city overcome with post earthquake morose Dave Dobbyn with an Orchestra is like inviting Leonard Cohen to sing at a children’s birthday party. Moving the Nietzsche theme on – this video below is what a proper ‘buck me up’ concert in Christchurch should have looked like. I’ll run the idea by the committee at The Rannerdale War Veterans Home for their stamp of approval.